Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment I Need Serious Advice! New

Right.

I agree with Dude.

What did his classroom teacher say? IMO, this story almost sounds like a parody. The teacher must have an opinion.

Exactly! They can't have both ways The results are clearly not correct.

OK, so my son was given the CogAT test. I called the publishing company yesterday to understand the meaning of the scores. They were the ones that explained to me the correlation of the IQ as compaired to his test results. For the stanine scores, the explanation of those state that my son is unable to grasp basic concepts without constant 1 on 1 teaching with frequent repetition.

Due to my child only being in 2nd grade, they do not take standardized tests. The school district goes completely off the CogAT scores. They are also supposed to go off of teacher recommendations and their DIBELS scores. The teacher was in complete shock when I spoke to her yesterday and the school is 100% behind me, to include the principle. The school isn't the issue, it is the district that runs the program.

I spoke with Johns Hopkins, UW Robinson Center, Duke, and Northwestern to obtain more information on gifted testing. They all stated that over 75% of truly gifted children will score at or below the median range of CogAT tests, which is why it is so important to have the tests given 1 on 1 with a licensed psychologist.

The only way my son is able to get into the gifted program is through this one test, unless I pay for outside testing through a specialist. I have his entire school record already, showing his DIBELS level is on par with 8th graders, his extra workbooks for 3rd and 4th grade math, his writing samples, his research papers, etc.

The books he has read include (but are not limited to), the Heroes of Olympus series, Percy Jackson series, Harry Potter Series, and Eragon. Right now he is reading the Kane Chronicles. He is the only child in his class able to read and understand these books on his own with zero assistance.

I meet with the "Highly Capable" program director today to fight about this. His teacher already submitted that it will be damaging to my son to stay in regular school next year. Our district has a 5 day a week, full time gifted school. However, after the fight I am in, I am wondering just how truly gifted this school is.

Syoblrig - I like the way you think!

I think that this is the best option. Also, 3k is about 2x the going rate in the nj/NYC area which I would imagine would be on the higher end of the pricing scale nationally

I've been in your shoes, and there is nothing funny about it.

I had a neuropsych tell me that I should prepare my son for manual labor jobs because he would never have the mental capacity for some of the jobs my son said he was interested in like physicist, software engineer ... He said I shouldn't feed that in my son because it was setting him up for failure.

I didn't laugh it off. I had a not very pleasant conversation with the neuro about his comments and the damage they did to parents with twice exceptional children - and to the kids.

I had him retested through a psychologist who contracts with the school who has experience in testing kids with learning disabilities and gifted IQ's. He qualified for gifted despite severe learning disabilities that skewed the results. The tester said his IQ is obviously much higher than the score she got but since it was high enought to qualify him for the classes we needed, we decided to stop lab-ratting him.

I personally would write a letter questioning the validity of the results and asking for a full evaluation from a professional qualified to deal with learning disabilities AND gifted IQ. If you have the money and you can find a specialist who has this background, I'd be willing to pay for it.

Good luck. I know how you feel right now, and it isn't fun. But you are your son's best advocate, so hang in there and be tenacious.

Also, just as an FYI, my son has never shown any type of learning disabilities. This is according to his stanine score description.

It sounds like you have an excellent case and perhaps the district will learn much needed information about proper identification and testing of the gifted population. Good luck and let us know how it goes!

jaggirl47, I've been in a very similar position when advocating for my EG ds - and he also scored far below his WISC scores on the CogAT. This is what I recommend:

1) You need individual IQ testing - it will give you two very important things. First, it let's *you* know where your ds scores. Second, it gives you a data point that the schools can't really argue. They can tell you the won't use it, but they are not going to tell you they can't "trust" a high score on the WISC.


I'd write a letter to the head of the district gifted department requesting a full evaluation (IQ+achievement testing), and cc your school staff (principal and teacher). Requests made in writing have to be answered - the answer might be "no" but the district will at least have to respond.

If the district says "no" - look into whether or not your medical insurance might cover it. Even if they won't, consider that it might be worth paying for an IQ test, through a licensed psychologist that you can trust. It's something that you're going to need to back you up in advocating.


I hope your meeting will go well! I am sure you're already at the meeting or it's already over, but fwiw - it will be helpful to know absolutely for sure what the path toward admissions into the HG program is in your district. While you know the district uses CogAT + Dibels + teacher recommendation - is that *all* they require? For instance, our district uses CogAT as a screener, so to get past the first hurdle a student has to score above a certain percentile... but that's not the *last* hurdle - the district gifted program then also administers another individual ability test + individual achievement testing. If you found out your district does that too - that might be your "in".


That's a really good question, but I also think there is another question out there that you would benefit from having the answer to - what is your ds' IQ? He's clearly a high achieving child, and clearly would be a good candidate for advanced academics... but is he a high achiever with a profoundly gifted IQ or a high achiever with a moderately gifted IQ? Having that piece of info helps. You may know the answer to that question simply by knowing your ds, but it's not necessarily related to high DIBELS scores or reading comprehension above grade level. AND... to further complicate things, not all school HG/etc programs are designed for the same type of student, or even with the same type of philosophy/curriculum choices etc. You'll have to do your research no matter what

Best wishes,

polarbear

So, I had the meeting with the program director. It started off very rough with arguments about the CogAT test. The district does not have child psychologists so they only go off the group scores of the CogAT.

Well, as the discussion progressed, I informed the director of my talks with the different CTY's. I happened to get many studies emailed to me yesterday that I will be forwarding to the district today. They were extremely shocked to hear the studies. I explained how these studies explain my child 100% and shows the failure of proper screening in the district. They are fully willing to read the studies to bring up at the next school board meeting.

We then got into my son's academic acheivements. I gave him the list of the books my son has read and tested on, which are between a high 4th to a low 8th grade level. It also gave his reading comprehension scores of these books. All tests were scored between 90-100% for comprehension. Keep in mind his CogAT scores state he cannot comprehend even basic concepts.

I then handed him my son's workbooks that he does for fun at home. These are his math books with 3rd and 4th grade math. He was suprised and asked if I helped my son with any of it. The answer was no. My son does it all on his own for fun.

After seeing all of this, my son's district test scores ended up getting pulled up. The director wanted to look to see how well he scores (why they didn't do that originally I do not know), and gasped. My son is the top student in the district for the second grade in reading, math, science, and social studies. Across the board. They grade on a 1-4 scale here and he scored 4's on everything with exception of 2 tests, which he scored the highest level of 3.

After reading everything my son has scored on, the director gave me an appeal form and said he wanted me to fill it out and put the dates of all upcoming testing for my son. He acknowledged that the district may have made a huge error in judgement. He also set my son up for MAP testing to be done within the next month. The MAP testing in our district is 4th-6th grade levels.

As far as the testing, here in Washington the testing costs up to $6000 depending on which psychologist you go to. Thankfully, my pediatrician is now on board and submitted it through our insurance. Insurance will be covering around 90% of the costs. He will be going through the full battery of testing to include a properly tested CogAT, IQ, Iowa Advancement, etc. This will take place over a few days to get the proper results.

The last thing the director asked me is what my child said about the CogAT test. My son informed me that he hated the teacher that administered it and that she was rude. He also asked me why he was forced to waste his time on such a stupid test. Those were his actual words. The director admitted that my son sounded extremely gifted.

As far as the level of gifted, we are not yet sure until he gets the IQ testing. The majority of our family ranges between 160-200 for IQ, so my guess is his will be fairly high.